


Dinner with Friend

by SecondSilk



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Gen, femgenficathon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-01
Updated: 2010-08-01
Packaged: 2017-10-10 21:32:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/104516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondSilk/pseuds/SecondSilk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stacy and James's dinner in Sports Medicine. Written for Jennyo's FemGen Ficathon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dinner with Friend

It was two hours drive to the hospital from her home in Short Hills. Stacy thought that maybe this was too far. Maybe they should consider moving back in again. If they lived closer, then she wouldn't feel as guilty driving so far for dinner. When she had made the call she hadn't been thinking about guilt or loss or grief. She'd thought only that it had been far too long since she had heard James Wilson's professionally apologetic voice. Putting down the phone had left her with a continuing sense of guilt, but when she pulled up outside the restaurant she still had no idea what she was to feel guilty for.

They still called the restaurant Patrick's, even though Patrick himself had long since sold up and moved to Thirty Fourth Street. Stacy had pictured the street front the moment James had suggested the restaurant for dinner, and the familiarity of the arrangement had drowned out the hints of anxiety she had been feeling since she had first dialled him number. The menu sticky taped beside the door had yellowed, and the red paint over the tiles below the window had began to peel. But the restaurant still sat between the bookshop and the Indian takeaway as if it had grown there.

James arrived at the entrance just as she did and offered her his arm. She had wondered once how much of James's charm was a considered act, but decided, on taking his arm, that it was a lot less considered than many others had suggested. Greg had on several occasions accused his friend of practising his smiles in the mirror. But the scene was too surreal, too much something out of another time, for James to have practiced for it. The thought of Greg made her frown, but the blue tablecloths made her think it would be nice to lose herself in this world again.

The seating waiter recognised James and led them through to their table in the back part of the restaurant. He gave Stacy a careful look before he left them, but she dismissed his speculation without a thought. She was here now, with James, in the restaurant, like she had been countless times before. The silence between them was awkward, the result of the too many months since they had last seen each other. To Stacy, the silence reminded her of Greg. She wanted to ask James if he could name the silence, but the awkwardness of it prevented that. It was too much like being in a client meeting without having read the memo, or seeing a doctor without having any symptoms.

Then James smiled the boyish grin that had accompanied their first meeting. Stacy returned it, reminded of all the reasons why she had recommended him to Julie. She wanted to ask about his wife, then, but didn't, not yet. Even old friendships required a little small talk.

"You're looking well," she said instead.

James looked down at what he was wearing, a plain dress shirt and an over-patterned tie, a gesture so young and familiar that she had to smile again. She could not imagine him dressed any differently, except for the lab coat.

"Thanks. You, too."

Stacy felt herself flush slightly. Part of her knew he was merely being polite; she looked like she had come from a business meeting. But another part of her knew he meant it, and she couldn't help but be pleased.

A new, less speculative waiter arrived with the menus. Stacy ordered a glass of wine to James's beer and thanked him as he left for having interrupted the compliments part of the conversation.

"How's Julie?" she asked now, and opened her menu to avoid looking at James's face.

"She's fine."

Stacy forced herself to read the pasta list rather than look up at the sudden blandness in his tone. She did not know whether it was practised or not, but knew that one time she would have been able to tell what it meant.

"She says hi," he added.

Stacy did look up then, in time to see James look cross at himself. He looked down at his menu, which was a waste, because she knew he had always ordered the spaghetti bolognaise, and even managed to eat it without getting any on his shirt. The brief thought that he wouldn't order bolognaise now came with a flickering of fear, until she remembered that it was more plausible that James Wilson carefully considered every item on the menu every time before ordering the same thing. That thought made Stacy smile.

He had been going to say something else, she recognised that much, but she could not think whether he wanted her to ask about Julie or not. Stacy wondered when things had gotten so strained between them. Time was she would have pushed him into continuing, would have told him what he was going to order anyway, would have teased him for his chivalrous gesture at the door. But she was being cautious, too.

The waiter returned, and Stacy ordered the chicken. She smirked when James ordered his pasta and he looked at her a little sheepishly. She paused instead of asking after any of their mutual friends; and he filled the silence by asking the fourth worst question she had prepared for.

"How are you?"

"I'm well," she said, and retreated to, "work has been interesting."

"Rescued any evil people from jail time recently?"

"They're not necessarily evil, just very rich," she said. "And they were in no danger of going to jail."

James raised an eyebrow, daring her to elaborate, and she laughed.

"Sally said to tell you that you still owe her lunch for last September. I'm in town to meet with Stephen and Sally about their new contract with Enerverate."

She had met with them that morning in fact, and with the representative from Enerverate that afternoon. And she had spent the whole week in phone calls and emails to them, as intimate with them now as before she had left.

"They're worried it's unconstitutional?"

"I drew up their business agreement for them," Stacy reminded him.

"How are they?"

"They're well. Sally's pregnant again."

She saw James tense a little, and wondered if it had anything to do with Julie. Sally had almost made her promise to report back anything she learned on the state of James's marriage. She had told Sally that Greg would the person to ask, and Sally had wisely scoffed at the idea. But Greg would know, and would share, and would want to hear what Sally had to say about Julie as well. Stacy, however, was meeting James to deliver her own news, and had been feeling guilty enough without turning their dinner date into a fact-finding mission. If James volunteered, she would be supportive.

In the meantime discussion of Sally's first pregnancy and the sweet terror of a child it had produced filled the conversation until their meals arrived. Stacy had imagined having a child with Greg, the one time she had thought she might be pregnant. She knew that Mark wanted children, but hadn't quite been able to formulate a decision making process. In the meantime, talk of Sally and Stephen's daughter, the food, and the glass of wine allowed Stacy to relax, to ponder the question of children calmly, and look forward to being able to deliver her news.

"Julie and I talked about kids," James announced suddenly, a forkful of pasta and sauce half way to his lips.

"But?" Stacy prompted.

James chewed the pasta pensively and swallowed before he shrugged.

"Neither of us is ever home," he said.

Stacy frowned in sympathy. She bit into a piece of her chicken as she tried to think of something to say. She wished that she had some advice, that relationships were as straightforward as contracts, that there was a way to a run a differential diagnosis on James' symptoms. Even though she wasn't sure she knew his life well enough now to know what the symptoms were. Just being here had her thinking with Greg's metaphors again, and it only added to her uncertainty.

James didn't seem to expect anything from her, though. He never had. He merely smiled at his own moroseness and moved the conversation on.

"You always wanted kids, didn't you?"

Stacy grinned and continued to eat.

"Can you imagine Greg with kids? Even his own?"

"He doesn't mind them before they get teeth," James said.

He sounded almost defensive and for the first time Stacy realised that James was absolutely on Greg's side now. She had thought that perhaps he had defended her to Greg, but she doubted that he would think to do so now.

She smiled, aiming for gentle, but sure that it was also sad.

"We never discussed it, you know, before. And I thought about talking to him afterwards, but not with the way things were."

It hurt, that she was still only about to talk in half sentences about what had happened between them. Part of her wished Greg were there, because he would never stand for such reticence; James had made it his life's skill to hear between what people were saying, to save them the trouble of baring their souls. It was how he survived with Greg, and hadn't survived with Susanna. Stacy could trust in James, too, to want to avoid that area of their past, and in his skill to steer the conversation away from the topic. He gave her the smile she was sure he practised to reassure the new nursing staff and rose to the occasion; moving from the past to the future.

"Any chance of little Stacies on the horizon, now?"

"Maybe," she admitted, "We haven't really discussed it."

"But there is someone to discuss it with?"

James's grin was slightly cheeky, as though it was a daring question to ask.

"Mark," Stacy told him. "He's a high school guidance counsellor."

James raised an eyebrow. Stacy smiled, remembering, too, the comments Greg had made about the study of psychology and the concept of counsellors.

"He makes up for it in other ways," she said.

She knew she looked silly, smiling the way she did. But she was pleased with herself, and with this chance to surprise James.

"So it's serious?"

"Well, I married him."

James looked shocked for a moment, much to Stacy's delight. But the shock did not fade to pleasure, or even curiosity. James blinked twice, as though he were trying to picture her as a bride. Stacy had never pictured herself as a bride, either, and understood his disorientation. She and Mark had been married in a registry office with her parents and sister, and his best friend. But the disbelief in James's expression made her both sad and angry.

"You didn't think I'd get married?"

The words settled over the table for a moment, as though the question were rhetorical. Stacy thought that it might be, but James did answer it.

"No," he said. "No, I just thought--I thought I'd hear about it."

The guilt that had been hovering over Stacy, settled over her in that moment and she was surprised to discover that this was the reason. She felt guilty for not inviting James to her wedding, for not giving him a chance to send a card, or tell Greg and have him attempt to disrupt the service.

"It was a small service," she said. "Just my family and his best man."

"And you didn't want to have to tell to Greg."

Stacy sighed, because she knew that it was true. She had tried to separate herself from her old life altogether, and had done a good job of it. Only James, of her old friends, did not understand the distance she wanted from Greg.

"You can tell him, if you want to."

James shook his head. Stacy wondered if Greg even knew that James was here with her tonight.

"He said to say hi," he told her.

Stacy did not flinch, and did not think she should or would have. But she did not know what to say, either. James's tone gave her no clue as to his intention in giving her that piece of news. Perhaps he would have said nothing to Greg at all, and then she wouldn't have felt guilty for intruding on his life again. But she'd have felt guilty for that as well. It seemed to be all he did to her, now.

"How is he?" She asked. She was surprised to discover she could sound neutral when talking about him.

"As always," James replied.

He seemed amused, as he often had at her relationship with Greg. The whole scene was far too familiar to Stacy, and she began to feel uncomfortable. She could imagine Greg, gruff and bitter or dark and sarcastic. It was beginning to get painful, and she forced herself to remember Mark and the calm sweetness she felt with him.

She was saved from thinking of a response by the waiter who returned to take their plates. He offered them a dessert menu and Stacy accepted out of habit. She looked over it as a chance to avoid James's presence for the moment.

When she looked up from the list of cakes again, he was watching her. He looked curious, and vaguely nervous, and it made her nervous. It was as if he were with someone he did not know very well, as if she had changed, become someone unrecognisable even as they had eaten dinner together.

"James?" she asked, hoping his name would be enough to make the scene familiar again.

She felt tired. The whole day was catching up with her. The last five years were catching up with her, and perhaps the years before that, as well.

"He loves you," James told her. It sounded like an accusation.

"I can't—," she managed, before the words caught in her throat and tears stug behind her eyes. "I can't stand him. I can't stand to be near him. Just being near him—"

She saw her hands twisted in her napkin and stopped to smooth it carefully. James looked quiet and understanding and she wasn't sure that she would ever be able to forgive him that. Part of her had never forgotten that he had not been there to make the decisions she had. A part of her even hated him for the ease of his relationship with Greg, and the fact that he was still there. But she had been able to forgive everything until now.

"Thinking of Greg is difficult. I have a different life now."

"I can see," James said.

It was less of an accusation. He even smiled at her gently, like a new acquaintance, or a patient. Stacy sighed, again, tiredly. She tried to remember how she felt driving from work, what she had felt in calling James, why she had even made the arrangement.

"I love Greg," she finally admitted. "But I found Mark. That's the life I have now, that is where I want to be."

James nodded. The understanding in his expression was deeper now, and once again she wanted to ask about Julie.

"We miss you," he said simply.

She smiled at him briefly. "I have to go."

He did not try to stop her. He said nothing as she pulled out money to pay for her dinner. She stood to leave and he stood, too, with automatic grace.

"Give my regards to Mark," he said and leant forward to kiss her gently on the cheek.

"Tell Greg I say hi. Or not. You choose."

"I will."

She left him standing alone in the restaurant. Relief, not guilt, met her as she stepped outside and walked through the cool evening to her car. As she drove towards Mark, away from James, she decided that two hours was really as close as she could stand to be.


End file.
